Page 33 of The Single Dad's Guide to Recreation

He shoots me a skeptical look. “You don’t mind being dropped into the middle of my chaos like an unprepared understudy?”

“The last thing I’d want to do is try and replace your wife. Your children’s mother.” My face heating, my heart pounding, I press on. “But I can’t deny that I’d really like to kiss you again.”

His gaze doesn’t waver from the road ahead, but his fingers grip the steering wheel so tightly that I can see his biceps bunch inside the sweater that stretches across his broad chest.

“But if it’s too much too soon, I totally get it,” I blurt when he doesn’t say anything else.

“It’s not that.” In the dim interior light of the car, I can just see his mouth twist to the side. “It’s just that it was so easy to pretend with you tonight. I felt—feel—more connected to you after knowing you for just a few weeks than I ever did with Lisa. And that seems really fucked up.”

“Oh.”

He glances over with a wince. “Not what you were expecting to hear, I bet.”

My mouth twist mirrors his from a moment ago. “Do you… want to talk about it?”

“It’s so complicated.” He lets out a long, heavy sigh. “But long story short, Lisa and I were never in love. We got pregnant by accident and decided to try and make it work.”

Pregnanttwiceby accident?is the first thing that pops into my mind, but that’s where I keep it, because he’s right, it does sound complicated.

“She was a brilliant woman,” he continues. “And kind. But she had mental health challenges that I didn’t learn about until postpartum depression exacerbated them.”

My hand flies to my mouth, hoping she didn’t end her own life.

“Her death was an accident,” he says, either hearing my gasp or reading my mind. “According to witnesses, she was reading on her cell phone and just stepped in front of a city bus.”

“Still, that must have been awful.”

“She died instantly, so she didn’t suffer.”

“But for the rest of you?”

“For those of us left behind, yes, it hasn't been easy. Percy was only months old, so he doesn’t remember her, but Mabel…” He drifts off but before I can think of anything comforting or understanding to say, he adds, “She lost her mom to depression and then lost her all over again to that fucking bus.”

We’re quiet for the last few minutes of the drive. Even after Josh pulls up in front of my parents’ house and turns off the engine, neither of us speaks.

“Maybe we should?—”

I break off when I realize he’s saying, “I’d still like to?—”

He stops mid-sentence. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

I turn to face him, feeling warm all over. “I’m torn. I feel a connection with you too, but…”

“I have a lot of baggage,” he finishes for me.

My own baggage wraps my gut in a viselike grip, the lovely meal we shared now like a boulder in my stomach. “Yeah, well, join the club.”

He turns to face me, but before he can ask anything else, I blurt, “What if we just see where this goes? If you’re worried about the kids, we can keep it on the down low. No one has to know but us.”

He tips his head to the side. “Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

My gaze falls to his lips, and my history floats to the box in the back of my brain where I usually stuff it. “I just really want to kiss you again.”

“That’s funny,” he says softly, his arm snaking along my shoulder. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

I’m not sure who moves first, but when we meet in the middle, I’m instantly intoxicated. Like I drank the whole bottle of that wine instead of one glass. As he teases along the seam of my lips and grasps the back of my skull, I scrape fingernails along his scalp. When I open my mouth to let him in, I’m swimming in sensation, inside and out, needing to get closer, feel more of him.

When we break for air, panting as our foreheads rest against each other, he chuckles.

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